A man accused of attempted murder of a New Jersey mother as she watched cartoons with her 3-year-old and while being recorded by a nanny cam was previously sentenced to to prison for a similar crime. Since pleading guilty for the earlier attack, and being released, he has been convicted of 12 additional felonies around New Jersey.

For the earlier home invasion in which he plead guilty, he reportedly broke into a house and started going through a jewelry box in a bedroom, hid in a closet when the front door opened, and then brutally attacked the mother of a 18-month-old daughter in front of her daughter.

Maybe it would be a good idea if the New Jersey officials would stop their practice of letting him out so early.

A 75-year-old retiree who lives in the Chicago area with his wife on a $1,500-a-month Social Security payment was caught picking dandelions by a Cook County Forest Preserve cop. At one time, the Chicago area was covered with trees and bushes. Most are gone, but some land has been set aside for the preservation of what remains. The dandelion is a weed which is not a native one.

The Forest Preserve cop gave the retiree a $75 ticket, an increase in his blood pressure, and a story to tell his wife. His court date is set for July 9th. A forest preserve cop is a political appointee who got his position by knowing someone. He can wear a uniform like a real cop. And apparently throw his weight around while ignoring common sense.

There is nothing to indicate that the Social Security retiree was picking the dandelions for any purpose other than to help sustain his wife and himself. However,

"A spokeswoman for the forest preserve district noted that foraging is prohibited there and called the practice "unsustainable, especially when it's done for commercial purposes"

Surveillance = unaccountable, undemocratic power over persons who have done no wrong

"One need to only look to the operation of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s and '50s to recall a time when rights were suspended and to be accused meant to be convicted of a thought crime. Often considered the smartest man of the last century, Albert Einstein died with a nearly 2,000 page FBI file.

J. Edgar Hoover gathered secret information on anyone and everyone of consequence, which gave him power over some presidents. In the 1960s, the FBI's COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) secretly monitored civil rights, anti-war and even feminist groups.

Hoover's "black bag jobs" against such public activists as Martin Luther King Jr., secret blackmailing attempts and nonjudicial "disruption" of these groups is what actually led to the Church Committee investigation of abuses and the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the NSA has now effectively dismantled.

When President Eisenhower gave his farewell address in 1961, he warned us about the military-industrial complex and said:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Yet, with all the massive poverty in this country and the continuing destruction of the American middle-class, there are those who are saying that they don't mind the spying upon all Americans. You've seen some of this.

What do these undemocratic trillion-dollar surveillance programs get for us?

"These programs falsely purport to get "novel intelligence from massive data." (In fact, NIMD is the actual, self-explanatory name of one such program). Few within the national intelligence community complained about the wrongfulness, illegality or ineffectiveness -- let alone the waste and fraud -- of programs that create billions in profit for private surveillance contractors, technology experts and intelligence operatives and analysts.

"But there's no evidence the NIMD theory has worked. Researchers long ago concluded that the NIMD-type promise of detecting and accurately stopping terrorists through massive data collection was simply not possible.

"Think about how Bush administration officials defended themselves from not following up on the incredibly specific intelligence warnings urgently going to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and National Counterterrorism Director Richard Clark in the months leading up to 9/11. Their common response back then was something along the line of: intelligence is like a fire hose, and you can't get a sip from a fire hose. There was apparently too much for top officials to even read the key memos addressed to them.

"(CN) - The Federal Circuit gave the Department of Veteran Affairs 60 days to show why it should not be sanctioned for denying veteran benefits.
...
"Federal law requires the benefits system for veterans to be pro-claimant, laying out procedural and appellate rights for veterans seeking adjudication. VA officials tasked with approving or denying benefits must actively look for ways to improve the cases of veterans both at the regional level and in the appellate process.

"In 2011, however, the VA issued an 'immediately-effective' rule that applied the pro-claimant procedures only to regional VA office dealings, stripping veterans of assistance within Board of Veterans' Appeals hearings. The National Organization of Veterans Advocates (NOVA) petitioned the Federal Circuit to review the rule, arguing that the VA implemented it without a mandatory notice-and-comment period required by the Administrative Procedures Act.

"The VA twice asked the Federal Circuit for more time to file its explanation, claiming the second time that it planned to repeal the rule. In fact, the department promised both NOVA and the appeals court that it would not apply the provisions of the new rule at all prior to publishing the repeal in the Federal Register. After claiming that it wanted the published appeal to become effective before responding, the VA won a third extension. NOVA then submitted evidence that the VA had been ignoring its promises to not enforce the rule, at least 60 cases in a single month alone.
...
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/27/56120.htm

Some communities are even reducting police protection for its law-abiding home owners and other citizens.
See, e.g., Fifth-Most Crime Ridden City in America Dismisses a Fourth of its Police Force. 911 Still in Servicehttp://www.democraticunderground.com/117297556

An honest discussion would include a consideration of these issues. Those who wish to squelch an honest discussion may want to call these reports or any references to them "right-wing talking points" or "NRA talking points." To squelch discussions, they may also wish to also call liberals and progressives who recognize a need for firearms to be owned for home defense "gun nuts." What legitimate purpose do they have for doing so?

Edited to add:In the Heller opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court held, among other things,
"1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53."http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-290.pdf

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home

Aren't proposals to disarm law-abiding home owners as sensible as the reaction to invade Iraq for the 9/11 attack by persons other than Iraqis? Are all reactions good reactions?

Is crime down in Oakland? Can it be that none of the law-abiding home owners will ever need to own firearms to discourage home invasions? After all, aren't their local police just a phone call away? Isn't that true all over?

If the law-abiding firearm owners in Oakland are called "gun nuts," and if there are proposals by those claiming to Democrats to take away or greatly restrict firearms, will that have no effect upon Oakland voters in the 2014 election? By what right do any posters claim to believe that there is a left v right divide over gun ownership and that liberals and progressives oppose gun ownership and that right-wingers are the only ones favoring that? Is such an alleged belief based upon a hoax?

If a hoax has been created to exploit a real tragedy so that the Republicans can repeat their 1994 election victories after the first gun ban, isn't that something that would be appreciated by Donald Segretti, Karl Rove, and those who admire their skill with dirty tricks?

After a jury decided that Chicago has a Blue Wall of Silence which the City used to protect a Chicago cop who brutally attacked a much lighter female bartender, Rahm Emanuel has decided to make an effort to set aside the verdict.

"Northwestern University professor Locke Bowman and University of Chicago professor Craig Futterman say the city is trying to sweep 'under the rug' a federal jury’s finding that the Chicago Police Department had either a code of silence or a policy of failing to properly investigate and discipline officers."

His trial - or extended lack of it until now - raises some Constitutional questions. And his trial raises related questions.

How does the reported military holding of Manning incommunicado for more than 900 days, without a trial, compare with the number of days that it has held any other prisoner incommunicado? And under the conditions which Manning was held?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33224.htm

Is anyone besides the military responsible for this? The military didn't act alone. The military didn't act in a vacuum. The military didn't do this without oversight.

How does the Obama Administration's act of holding Manning incommunicado for more than 900 days, without a trial, compare with the number of days that it has held any other prisoner incommunicado? And under the conditions which Manning was held?

Even if we assume that Manning released the video showing the helicopter gunship gunning down civilians including children (and I assume that it is true), and even if we assume that Manning released copies of diplomatic cables showing the perfidy of the those involved in the military-industrial complex (and I also assume that this is true), are we supposed to overlook this type of cruel and unusual pre-trial punishment of Manning because President Obama has a big "D" after his name? Are we supposed to cheer "Hooray for our team"?

In April 2001, almost 300 law professors and other scholars (including Laurence Tribe, a widely recognized as a leading liberal scholar of Constitutional law) signed a letter to the Obama Administration. In it, they pointed out something that should be obvious to any law professor or former law professor: The detention conditions violates the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.